The Bank lab @ the Gulbenkian Institute

Massimo Amicone

PhD student
Contact:mamicone [at] igc.gulbenkian.pt

Generally speaking, my interests consist in understanding the mechanisms that are responsible for the origin and the maintenance of biological diversity, from the molecular up to the population level. I see evolution as a vertical bridge connecting the nested levels of biological systems and as a key to model their interactions.

My PhD project, in collaboration with Isabel Gordo’s Lab regards the study of gut microbiome dynamics. The mammalian microbiota represents a complex systems with hundreds of bacterial species that potentially interact with each other and with the host. Their stability and diversity are considered crucial for the host’s health but yet poorly understood. I aim at building and engineering a gene-based mathematical model which will allow us to investigate and to quantify the effect of evolutionary change and its mechanisms on the dynamics that underlie the microbial community.

I completed my M.Sc in Bioinformatics (2017) and my B.Sc in Mathematics (2014) at the University of Bologna in Italy.